24/7, 16.8: is 24 a political show?

The utilitarian reading leads quite briskly to a second: "the circumvention of protocol," or more euphemistically, "hacking," that is, the instigation of material governance within information systems in a manner entirely different from any notion of commercial or juridical power. This is where a specifically anticapitalist desire blossoms in 24--through a pervasive rejection of law, bureaucracy, and structure. The utilitarian moral telos, which might be fascistic in itself, nevertheless endorses principles of personal virtue, will-to-power, instinct, and usurpation of governance. In the control society informatic systems are always in a state of "self-exploitation" and are defined not as an integral object but as a flexible network of command and control, which only becomes realized through its own transgression by another informatic force. The force is often a virus, a CTU hacker, or any other informatic agent. In a total, pervasive structure of organization--state of war, militarization of the police, automatic weapons, C4 explosives, pervasive militarism, SWAT teams outside every door--the cycle of control also facilitates "going dark" in the form of the "state of exception," black prisons, extradition, and so on. The show fetishizes teamwork and chain of command, and protocol is always followed to a tee. But protocol is also what must always be circumvented; by breaking the rules efficiency is achieved, whether toward the utilitarian, biopolitical moral end or ultimately the security of the population. Is this utopia or fascism? Again, it is not so clear.

"JUST LET ME DO MY JOB"

But the question is still not completely addressed: is 24 a political show? The various moral claims only go so far. So for a first salvo, I propose a renaming of the series: 24/7. And likewise an assertion, if not evocative then at least provocative: CTU is the sweatshop of the new millennium.

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The characters on 24 need to be understood not simply as a paramilitary force, what Louis Althusser calls the repressive state apparatus, but as a post-Fordist labor force as well. These are employees who quite literally cannot clock out. Like a sweatshop, they are chained to their jobs. This principle is demonstrated in the basic premise of the show, that the work day is no longer nine to five, but extends throughout all twenty-four hours. The show's "day" is a work day. It is an economic state of exception, wherein the normal rules of fair labor practice (periodic work breaks, personal injury protection, overtime pay) are tossed out the window, and willingly so by the employees in question. Modernity brought the "I'm just doing my job"--leave me alone in my penance, I'm just "working for the weekend"--attitude. But the information age has an entirely different emphasis: "Just let me do my job." In this mode there is a heightened ownership of one's labor within an ethic of self-worth and spiritual achievement. Real life is an anti-labor blockade, an interruption. The goal is not to uncouple from the sphere of labor, but instead to enter it entirely and sincerely. Inefficient extra and inter-labor distractions must be cast off. "Just let me do my job, OK?"--these words are vocalized in the show at least one time per episode.

At the same time as it is a sweatshop, CTU is also mutually related to a "normal" labor environment. The exceptional is always articulated via the normal and vice versa. The sleek corporate feel of the contemporary work space is everywhere in the show. Laptops, cell phones, open cubicles, conference rooms, and multipurpose spaces all are signifiers of the post-dotcom renovation of corporate life. Everything is fluid and flexible, which also means nomadic and impermanent. The explosion at CTU in season two is illustrative of the temporary nature of all contemporary work space. One often has to work in physical conditions that are perpetually "under construction." The members of the team might have to leave their jobs on a moment's notice. The workers on this show are a post-Fordist, nomadic labor force left with little to no job security.

The cruel irony is that the CTU lineup is not very good at doing its job. Each looming catastrophe that drives the show's serial narrative fails to be averted by this crack team: in season one, the Palmer assassination attempt goes forward; in two, the nuke detonates; three, a spurt of white stuff as the virus vials pop; four, meltdown, Air Force One down; five, hostages die, the gas is released. Catastrophe is, in the narrative logic of 24, the money shot--it must be shown.

But the slacker nineties are gone forever even if these workers are not getting the job done. A new totality of work dominates in such a way as to trump all other realms--desire, juridical justice, personal relationships, etc. In fact, there is effectively no domestic space on this show at all. All sexual or familial relationships transpire within the walls of CTU headquarters or within the context of other work spaces. Women and children have joined the work force. Most if not all other personal relationships that defy the work space are met with death and ruin. Being alive and being on the clock are now essentially synonymous.

CTU agents cannot clock out, but at the same time they are expected to sacrifice life and limb while on the job. Each employee is expected in the normal course of the work day to risk his or her personal well-being. Like a sweatshop, where safety guidelines are routinely ignored, the notion of an injury-free work environment is prohibited here: both Tony and Chase are shot at close range but are back working at peak performance within the hour; Jack's heart stops but he is right back to work; George Mason goes terminal with plutonium poisoning but stays at his terminal all the way to the grave.

It is, in Marx's terms, the extension of both absolute and relative surplus: the work day is extended "absolutely" from eight to twenty-four hours, and at the same time the actual minute-by-minute urgency of the work day is elevated "relatively" such that the importance of productivity is measured by the raw horizon of one's own life force.

INFORMATICS AS STYLE

It is time now to address a mathematical concern. The chronology lie in 24 is flagrant. Here is a show that not only professes to be concerned with the fidelity of real-time representation, it goes so far as to avow this commitment, this mathematical obligation, by actually naming itself after the day-long interval it attempts to document, using the very numerical language of that interval: "Twenty-four." The numbers go like this: each episode lasts 42 or 43 minutes minus commercial interruptions; 42 minutes on the hour comes to 70 percent; there are 24 episodes per season. A complete season, therefore, comes to approximately 16.8 hours. So now a second retitling is warranted: not just 24/7 but also 16.8.

What about the rest? Where is my missing time? What happened during those lost hours, those many accumulated interruptions? Of course the obvious answer: commerce happened. But it is more fundamental than that. Commerce did not happen; it is withheld, both from the perspective of form and narrative. The advertisement is "there," the content is "here." And then later after broadcast, on DVD for example, the advertisements are excised completely with no explanation at all. This is not to be alarmist, for of course we are dealing here with fictions from the onset, but the fact that the show flaunts its own chronometric failings by denying that they even exist is an indication of a logic of absence and disavowal that is worthy of closer scrutiny. This is the "reality gap" of reality television. There is a chasm, a media hole the length and width of which run 30 percent of the total dimension. What a massive void, all the more awe-inspiring in that it seems not to be missed at all.

But the loss of time reflects itself back on the immediate presence of the whole, as the mode of production becomes synonymous with "style" itself. In an extension of Raymond Williams's reading of television, one is able to see the media-formal imprint of capitalist modes of production and distribution on the semiotic logic of the medium. This was already explored above with the discussions around utilitarianism and totality. But it is also evident here, as 30 percent of the material withholds itself, all the while professing its own stopwatch exactitude.

The mock title 16.8 is a way to introduce the question of informatics as style. This is an occult numerology whereby one "special" number is replaced by another right at the very moment of its own articulation. The show does not present 24 hours to the viewer.

I suggest titling this phenomenon "disingenuous informatics." One piece of data, a specific time duration, is swapped for another of lesser duration but equally as specific. The avowed threat becomes a spoof. One minute Jack is a traitor, the next minute he reveals it was all an elaborate lie. Every few minutes, the plot of the show flips radically, as unceasingly as the ticking clock itself. This is pure information as aphrodisiac, a cult of epistemological reversal. Surprise reversals, the "gotcha" ending, thinking one thing and then learning later that it all was otherwise--these many rapidly unexpected and changing narrative states evoke an "informatic pleasure" over and above any sense of visual pleasure. It is Aristotle's peripeteia, only repeated at such rapid frequency that it eclipses all other formal techniques. It is a central trait of the contemporary trend toward informatics as style.